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Science Journal: Multiple universes are out there, scientists say

On March 17 a group of scientists using BICEP2, a Southpole telescope known as the Background Imaging and Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2, reported discovering direct evidence for the first time of what Albert Einstein predicted in his general theory of relativity: Gravitational waves that supported the Big Bang start to the universe. But not just one universe. Many.

" Imagine that you are making a raisin bun, said Stanford physicist Kent Irwin, who worked on sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. As the dough bakes and expands, the distance from any given raisin to another increases."Certainly everything in the universe that we see now, at one time before inflation, was smaller than an electron," Irwin said. "And then it expanded during inflation at faster than the speed of light." "

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So now it's time to join the "multiverse club" because the discovery makes it more likely or mathematically fitting that we are in fact existing in one of many universes.

"Join the "multiverse club," Linde wrote in a March 9 review of inflationary cosmology, and what looks like a series of mathematical embarrassments disappears in a cloud of explanation. In a multiverse, there can be more things dreamt of in physicists' philosophy than happen to be found in our sad little heaven and earth.

Every kind of cosmos is out there in the aftermath of the Big Bang, from our familiar universe chock full of stars and planets to extravaganzas that encompass many more dimensions, but are devoid of such mundane things as atoms or photons of light.

In this multiverse spawned by "chaotic" inflation, the Big Bang is just a starting point, giving rise to multiple universes (including ours) separated by unimaginable gulfs of distance. How far does the multiverse stretch? Perhaps to infinity, suggests MIT physicist Max Tegmark, writing for Scientific American."

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Why?

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"The process that inflates a universe looks just too potent to happen only once; rather, once a Big Bang starts, the process would happen repeatedly and in multiple ways.

That means every kind of cosmos is out there in the aftermath of the Big Bang, from our familiar universe chock full of stars and planets to extravaganzas that encompass many more dimensions, but are devoid of such mundane things as atoms or photons of light."